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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was no consensus to delete. Johnleemk | Talk 13:22, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

American terrorism

[edit]

This was written entirely by one editor and includes loads of original research, such labeling the JFK assassination and support of Israel terrorism. Carbonite | Talk 17:57, 25 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep:


--Striver 19:27, 25 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


As I play with this article, I think it is the foundation for an article that has real merit.... Terrorism committed by US citizens or the US government. Maybe we could call it Terrorism in the US. "American Terrorism" is just such a loaded term.

  • Rename Terrorism in the United States and expand. FCYTravis 03:44, 26 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I'm surprised the American attack on Grenada is not mentioned, nor is the blatant American funding of the Contras in Nicaragua. I do not support renaming this article - it does not talk about terrorism in the United States, it talks about terrorism by the United States. Denni ☯ 04:01, 26 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment: I contend that this article is in need of so much improvement that it would be easier to start over at a new title such as Terrorism in the United States or Terrorism by Americans (depending on the focus of the article). Remember, substantially different content can not be speedily deleted. Carbonite | Talk 15:46, 26 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • One country attacking another country is not terrorism. One country supporting counter-revolution in another country is not terrorism. You just want to add more POV to this already POV-laden article (and not the balancing POV either).  Grue  06:37, 28 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • On the surface what you are saying is accurate. However, is supporting terrorism terrorism? For example, funding insurgents in foreign countries, as the US has done, or let's say we had concrete proof that a foreign goverment aided the people who carried out the Sept.11 actack. Would the support of the terrorists be terrorism? I don't know! There are a lot of definitions of terrorism, one being: acts of violence against civiliians for the purpose of creating social change. How does funding/training people to do the acts of violence to that create the chang YOU want fit in? I don't know... Sethie 07:38, 28 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good point, maybe a whole seperate article on terrorism committed by US citizens

Sethie 04:25, 26 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete Has about a grain of truth in a 10000000000000 grain article. Absolutely hopeless.

Coment "Terrorism and American Foreign Policy", —by Robert Elias September 25, 2001, Professor of politics at University of San Francisco, California.

See section "US Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction"

See also:

Specific Torture Campaigns
Creation and launching of direct US campaigns to support torture as an instrument of terror and social control for governments in Greece, Iran, Vietnam, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Panama

--Striver 13:21, 28 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. I put up the initial NPOV tag; this is more a polemic than an article. The factual content is covered by State terrorism#United States. (Click on the "Israeli terrorism" link above and see where that goes.) With regards to the Iraq War, see that article for an encapsulation of criticism, plus the seven or so other articles it Wikilinks to which are dedicated to criticism in and of themselves. The source of the term itself is spurious--a lone column on CNN. If you bother to read the CNN column, you'll discover that it actually discusses acts of Domestic terrorism. As for assassinations, those generally are not considered to be terrorist acts. (See the UN definition of terrorism, for instance.) Torture does not fall under the auspices of terrorism. The author seems to have unilaterally decided that there is no difference between war crimes and terrorism. (The UN sees a difference!) The use of weapons of mass destruction is not automatically a terrorist action. (And as for the U.S. being the only country to use WMDs: not by a long shot. The author doesn't seem to understand what constitutes a weapon of mass destruction; the definition changes every time the guns get bigger, so to speak.)
I'm a little uncertain about the logic supporting a redirect to a separate article, as you suggest above. The term is clearly notable and in wide use. BrandonYusufToropov 17:40, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty damned liberal and open to criticism of the United States, but not in this format and not on Wikipedia. It's soapboxy, often factually questionable, redundant when factually accurate, and structurally appalling in all cases. Tom Lillis 19:19, 28 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
coment This article is not about disscusing what of the actions of the USA that comes into the domain of Terrorism, rather, it list those actions of the USA that have been labeled as "Amerrican terrorism". In other words, its has nothing to do with if it is terrorism or not, rather if it is called terrorism. A Professor of politics at University of San Francisco, California is a good source for finding out what things are called "Amerrican Terroris". Look at Islamofascism (term), it does not give on single evidence of actions that are terrorism and sanctioned by Islam, rather, it talks about what people use the term, against whom, and what the cirtics respond.

Everything you listed belongs to a "critic" section in this article. --Striver 13:29, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep, though it certainly needs cleanup. Not yet NPOV, but that's not the issue. Whether an idea offends us or seems (in some subjective way) inherently contradictory is not the point. People are using this term, including [prominent journalists]. Google hits: 77,000. Clearly over the threshold of notability. BrandonYusufToropov 17:10, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Could a NPOV article be written on American terrorism? Sure. The issue here is that this article needs so much work that it's just easier to start over. If someone wants to write Terrorism in the United States or Terrorism by Americans, no one is stopping them. Keeping this specific article doesn't make any sense because it needs a complete overhaul. Deleting this article doesn't mean that a substantially different and much better article can't exist. Carbonite | Talk 17:16, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm afraid I have to disagree. We're talking about the term, and this locution wouldn't be covered by Terrorism by Americans. It looks like some people with ideological motives wish to whitewash the term, despite the fact that this phrase is manifestly notable in usage. That's not the way we do things here. BrandonYusufToropov 17:20, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • In addition, it appears that this article was made in bad faith. The author (User:Striver) created the article with the edit summary "So, now im just waiting for the VFD, POV tag and such...)". He removed a NPOV tag placed by another user and stopped editing completely after it was put up for deletion. There's no sign at all that he's interested in making this a good article. Carbonite | Talk 17:21, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • OK, so delete the article and rewrite it, starting fresh. How can anything in the current article be of help to other editors? Remember, another article created with the same title can not be speedily deleted if the content is substantially different (which any good article on the subject would be). Carbonite | Talk 17:24, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        • Again, we disagree. The principle here is important. If the article needs revision to get to basic NPOV standards, other editors, including me, can help to do that. The fact that you believe nothing on the current article is salvageable is subjective and (if I may) only tangentially relevant to the question of whether this title for an article should be rejected here. BrandonYusufToropov 17:29, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
          • Comment The Google test is a wee bit skewed here. A search for "American terrorism" yields 77,000 results, sure. Remove "Latin," "South American," and "Anti-American" from the search, and it drops to 14,000. If you cut "expert" (as in "American terrorism expert"), it gets even lower. At that point, an astonishing number of the results are, in fact, copies of that article by Robert Fisk and many more are articles directly relating to the Attacks of September 11, 2001. The duplication is vast. Google test, therefore, is something of a canard and hard to apply in this case.. (Google for "Presidential blowjob"; I bet that'll meet the standards for a notable term, too.) Additionally, I second the on the article's creation being in bad faith on the grounds previously stated: it might as well be titled "Things the Original Author Does Not Like About the United States, So Come and Argue With Him About It." The argument that this article is validated by the fact that it is Wikilinked to on the State terrorism article and therefore is an expansion on the topic is ridiculous; I think we can all agree on that. The issues, as I see them, are then: 1.) The article is fairly clearly advocating a certain point of view. 2.) The article contains a very large amount of original research. 3.) The factual material present is listed elsewhere without the rampant POV. 4.) Personal opinion: We don't want to promote this article model. If we let this one go for whatever reason (be it belief that the article is suitable or personally held anti-American sentiment), we'll shortly have other articles like it for dozens of other countries. For instance: French Terrorism (They colonized Vietnam and oppress Muslim citizens.) German terrorism. (Battle of Britain, the Holocaust, et cetera.) Japanese terrorism. (The occupation of Korea, perhaps.) These examples are more or less in line with the material presented here. I have no doubt that a.) we don't want this kind of deliberately inflammatory rhetoric on Wikipedia and b.) that if we used the arguments against deletion being put forth here, the existence of these hypothetical articles could be justified. That's all. Tom Lillis 18:31, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • You're obviously better at disentangling Google results than I am. That said, 14,000 hits is 14,000 hits, and there are literally hundreds of WP articles that deal with topics of considerably lower notability.
  • 14,000 hits with considerable syndication and duplication, note. And in many (possibly most) of those results, the term is not being used in the context discussed in this article.
  • I'd like a clearer explanation, please, of precisely why this is relevant to our discussion:
4.) Personal opinion: We don't want to promote this article model. If we let this one go for whatever reason (be it belief that the article is suitable or personally held anti-American sentiment), we'll shortly have other articles like it
  • What I'm trying to get at is this: if we keep this article on the merits argued here (and I feel those merits are being overstated), we've set a very low standard for the inclusion of politically inflammatory neologisms. For the life of me, I have no idea how the hell Islamofascism has its own article, for instance--it has an ephemeral meaning and is little more than a venomous epithet.
Perhaps my aside about possible motives for advocating the retention of this article was inappropriate. I should have been more forthright: I'm increasingly suspicious that this is a violation of WP:POINT tying intoWikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Islamofascism (term). Please forgive my sudden break in formatting, but...
Note the following from the previously linked Islamofascism AFD debate:
comment American fascism [1] 78 000 hits, enough to make a article about it. --Striver 20:15, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Lol! There already was one! --Striver 20:16, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

christian fascism [2] 22,900 hits. --Striver 20:24, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
'Summary and timestamp for the creation of the American terrorism article:
08:14, 23 November 2005 Striver (So, now im just waiting for the VFD, POV tag and such...)
I'm sorry, but that is blatantly bad faith and (in my opinon) in violation of WP:POINT. I am fairly convinced at this point that this whole thing is a stunt to make a point and push a particular point of view. (Striver, I hasten to add, has something of a prolific history of disputed edits and heated arguments for someone who has only been here five months...) If this one gets by, a weak de facto policy decision has been made saying that this sort of article is okay, and it opens the door for the retaliatory creation of a mass of other pages in its vein.
I hope this makes my position clearer.
Tom Lillis 20:07, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It does. For the record, I have had my own (amply documented) problems with Striver in the past. Neither those problems nor the points you raise above, however, demonstrate for me that there should never be an article about this term's usage. In this case, we may well have an example of bad faith editing that has resulted in an article title that does not merit deletion, but rather rewrite and/or redirect. For now, I'm leaning toward rewrite, though I certainly respect other opinions on the matter. BrandonYusufToropov 20:34, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Going down that route, then, requires some kind of consensus on what direction such an article would take. Again, I challenge the notability of the term in and of itself as merit for a Wikipedia article. It's a poltically loaded neologism and a carefully conducted Google search will, as noted above, reveal a rather low count of usages in the context primarily being advocated here.
That's what the article talk page is for. (And see the citations below.) What we're talking about here is whether an article title about this term should be removed forever from the WP. BrandonYusufToropov 21:34, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Calling it an "umbrella term," I think, is rather generous--even then, it's a tough candidate for elevation over a reasonable notability threshhold. At some point later, it might reach a level of notability to merit an article. Right now, though, I don't think it does.
If, as has been proposed above, the article is about "acts of terrorism committed by the United States government," then we have a legitimate extension of the State terrorism article, which would more properly be termed "Terrorism Sponsored by the United States." To maintain NPOV, however, actions taken by the United States would have to be judged as terroristic or conventional by the standards used to judge other countries discussed in State Sponsored terrorism. Neither the current article's title nor its content serve that purpose or meet those (reasonable) conditions.
If the article is to discuss domestic terrorism in the United States (which has also been suggested above), then the article would rightly be named "Domestic Terrorism in the United States." (Incidentally, that would be more in line with the CNN article currently being used as a source for the term "American terrorism.") As it stands, the article almost seems to suggest that the Ku Klux Klan and the Beltway Sniper were inventions of the U.S. Government.
As for the list of Wikilinks at the bottom... I don't even know how to classify those. The Klan belongs with Domestic Terrorism, but the other three are spurious. Operation Northwoods was a suggested idea that never went anywhere. The CIA's experiments with LSD were unethical, but I have never heard them referred to as terroristic. I suppose they more rightly belong with a list of proven conspiracy theories, but certainly not here.
If we keep this up, I think we'll have to move the conversation somewhere else---we're crowding the vote page.. Tom Lillis 21:14, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, BrandonYusufToropov 19:23, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm confused as per Tom harrison. As an article about the term, it is largely devoid of content, so if that was the intention of the article, then delete. As an article about the thing the term refers to only, it needs to be renamed as per the above suggestions (state terrorism enacted by the united states etc.). Really, it can and should be about both, but then needs to be much more informative about the reference, as a bare minimum for achieving NPOV about the referent. In its present form, whatever the intention, I vote delete. Also, this may full under "don't disrupt WP to make a point." Dsol 00:25, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - On second thought, I guess it's not "supposed" to be anything other than what we the editors make it. The article was written to prove a point, and the present content reflects that. But American terrorism, as terrorism by Americans directed at other Americans, is a reasonable title and topic for an encyclopedia article. I'm thinking of Oklahoma City, the Klan, the abolitionists, maybe tar-and-feathering loyalists during the Revolution. Hmm...What about native American raiding parties? That could get interesting. American terrorism as a term is also legitimate. Obviously all the content there now has to go; Whatever appears under the title has to fit the title. It should be an encyclopedia article, not a place to spew anti-American venom. I think the title is legitimate as long as the content matches it. Tom Harrison (talk) 00:45, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Since all the content there now has to go, isn't that essentially a deletion? Wouldn't it be easier to start from scratch? I fully agree that an article can, and probably should, exist there, but this is a complete tear-down job. Why not delete until such time that someone decides to write a real article? It's not as if anything in the history is going to be helpful to future editors of the article. Carbonite | Talk 00:52, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • It probably would be easier to start over, but I would prefer to keep the name if we can. I guess that makes me guilty of trying to prove a point just like Striver. Is there a technical reason why it's easier to take it down and then put it back up under a similar name? If the names are similar enough it's all one to me. Could some minimal stub go up, or a redirect to domestic terrorism? Would it accomplish anything to make a new page now and redirect the present page there? You've probably already considered these. Tom Harrison (talk) 01:20, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Re: This whole "then why aren't you working on the article" thing -- I believe there are many editors who have never worked on this article and are postponing doing so, pending the outcome of this vote. (I'm one of them.) We don't want to be labeled as partisans just now, which is what would perhaps happen if we started working on the piece, and we believe the term is notable and mainstream. Rest assured that it's on my to-do list.BrandonYusufToropov 12:06, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • I read your arguments before commenting. You obviously have a misplaced sense of loyalty. Blinding yourself to growing problems in the government doesn't strengthen the United States; it weakens it. Supporting policies of terrorism by calling them something else doesn't help our men in uniform; it makes them targets. The first step in solving a problem is to admit that it exists. --Peter McConaughey 04:10, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • This sounds vaguely like a suggestion that I am an unworldly idiot. Once more, with feeling: as an article on the term in and of itself, I don't feel that the TERM is widespread enough to merit an individual article. (Mr. Toropov and I have gone up and down and left and right on this issue; it's covered quite thorougly elsewhere in the discussion.) Wikipedia is not a soapbox. Rehashing facts about American transgressions that are covered in detail elsewhere on Wikipedia then and terming these transgressions as "American terrorism" because classifying actions as terroristic is trendy is merit enough for a new article. I'm not some flag-waving boob who doesn't see what happens in the broader world. When politicians, newsmakers, journalists, and academics begin to trot out this term with enough regularity to make it a concretely-definable neologism and for it to pass a reasonable notability test, I'll start the bloody article myself. But as for now, it is nothing more than a soapbox with which to say "I don't like the United States and this is an eye-catching way to make that known." Tom Lillis 03:49, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • "American terrorism" is more than a trendy term. It's a term that encompases modern American foreign policy, U.S. war policy, U.S. influence on other nations, and increasingly, the relationship between civilians and government officials inside the United States. It's all terrorism. It's all the American government saying, "Be good, or bad things will happen to you," and then backing that up by making all manner of bad things happen. Those inside the box have no idea what I'm talking about, but most of the world lives outside of the U.S./U.K. punishment box and will do anything to keep it that way. --Peter McConaughey 04:10, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        • Sigh. Yes. Domestically, I like to call that "American fascism." The laugh-out-loud absurdity of this whole thing is beginning to drive me batty. You and I would probably end up at the same damned protest parade, I think. The problem is that here on Wikipedia, we have to have our discourse within the consensus-derived policies and guidelines. This article doesn't mesh with those rules because it simply isn't encyclopedic. It's the soapboxy discussion of a term that doesn't meet notability guidelines. Your outrage is noted and appreciated and agreed with; this is just not the place to advocate it. Tom Lillis 04:41, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • The point (as I think you know by now, Tom) is not that any individual has outrage, but rather that the term itself has become a globally notable one.
  • As for whether the term has been used widely enough to be encyclopedic, I find it very hard to believe that it is less notable than, say, Unitarian Jihad. See the multiple representative mainstream sources I have referenced below, which are only a very small sampling. BrandonYusufToropov 12:06, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Examples of published mainstream use of this term, in this context

[edit]

War on Terrorism and the Terror of God

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

by Lee Griffith - 2004 - 399 pages

Page 81 - ... Walzer's description of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as American terrorism cannot be dismissed as the rantings of a pacifist. ... [[1]]


Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism

HarperCollins

by Sean Hannity - 2004 - 352 pages

Page 166 - ... militarist leaning' in the US media, and what he described as the history of American terrorism in Nicaragua, Chile, Costa Rica, Honduras, Argentina, ... [[2]]


Race Matters

Beacon Press

by Cornel West - 2001 - 144 pages

Page vii - 'The unique combination of American terrorism—Jim Crow and lynching—as well as American barbarism—slave trade and slave labor—bears witness to the ... [[3]]


There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of such published uses I could post here, but this clarifies what I'm talking about. It is clearly notable and clearly mainstream. BrandonYusufToropov 21:29, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Dozens, perhaps. You have to massage Google to get at what you're after. I get 119 references in 58 books looking for mentions where American terrorism isn't prefixed with "anti." I couldn't cut out other limiting factors because of a risk of culling legitimate results in the process. I question the standard of notability you are employing: broadly speaking, I think this is a fairly paltry result. Perhaps some effort should be put into developing a consensus on notability rules? Tom Lillis 21:48, 29 November 2005 (UTC) Wee addendum: I think you're slightly confused about delete policies. The rules do not say "forever." And a discussion about the content of the article in question is valid: determining notability is largely guided by determining definition and intent.[reply]
That's through Google Books. There are other resources with much bigger universes of references -- academic journals, for instance -- and it was those to which I was referring. I stand by "hundreds," and by the term's notability and mainstream usage. You are correct on the "forever" thing; my bad. BrandonYusufToropov 22:01, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, another prong. Using LexisNexis (full database access, mind), a search of all news items over the past twelve months reveals 49 results, with AP-repost duplications left intact and without boolean screening for context (removing incidences where it references an American terrorism expert or anti-American terrorism, et cetera). Using JStor and excluding "anti-American terrorism" (retaining mentions of experts, as that would be sort of an idiotic term to exclude in a journal search), I came up with three journal items. (Restricted to the English language.) Tom Lillis 00:19, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It is used, in addition to all the other citations I have given, in this morning's [San Diego Tribune]. Do you mind if I ask you why you keep trying to raise the bar on this? Is there something about this term that you find ideologically objectionable? BrandonYusufToropov 11:41, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as original research. I don't necessarily dispute the idea of the article (anymore than I'd dispute Soviet Terrorism), but this is lacking in objectivity and scholarly references. Moreover, the term American Terrorism is linguistically broad. "American" can refer to much of the Western Hemisphere, not just the United States of America. Moreover, the term does not distinguish between foreign and domestic terrorism, or the nationality of the perpetrators of domestic terrorism. Finally, the term "terrorist" is inherently POV especially when applied to a sovereign entity. Mackensen (talk) 13:16, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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